


Timed Puzzles

by Cheloya



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 09:39:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10806537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheloya/pseuds/Cheloya
Summary: Imported, from 2008. Mildmay tells Felix heist stories on the road.





	Timed Puzzles

  
If there's anything to be said about being a kept thief, it's that it leaves you with a Great Septad stories to tell even if you're really fucking awful at it. There's a shortage of people to tell them to, but after things quieted down some, seemed like all Felix wanted was for me to keep talking, just to keep his mind off things, and uncomfortable as it was to tell it like he'd never left Pharaohlight, it was even fucking harder to make them work outside pure gutter Marathine. All I can say is, it was a long fucking trip.  
  
Mostly, Felix didn't even nod. I'd pissed him off a few times waiting for some sign that he was listening, so after a while I started telling the stories like I used to tell them to myself, working out what I'd say, how I'd say it, where I'd pause. I was a lot fucking smarter than I'd been with Keeper, or I'd stopped thinking the same, at least, because most of what I remembered wanting to say was stuff that no one wanted to go admitting to Felix in a frilly pink fit.  
  
The point is, I was concentrating so hard on the words I needed that I didn't notice Felix was paying proper attention until I'd stopped too long trying to remember exactly the lay of a particular room in this house with a broken piano and he said, "What were the numbers for?"  
  
So I told him: there'd been a safe in the place, right up the top floor near a green room. A normal tumbler ain't even much trouble to me these days, but that safe had a lock that was the queen of all bitchkitties. I ain't never seen nothing like it, even now.  
  
Reason was, the crazy alchemist who owned the building - can't remember his name, but there was a big fuss about his wife sometime or other, maybe to do with Obscurantists, 'cause most things did at the time - had managed to hook up a clock to the thing, so if you didn't turn it all just right inside a minute, you'd be shit out of luck for another while you waited for it all to reset.  
  
I'd had pretty good instructions, but all Keeper could tell me about the combination was that there were bits of it hidden all around the house, and I'd have to be quick because this alchemist was sort of like a blood witch about grabbing people and putting them to bad use whether they liked it or not.  
  
I got the numbers, anyway, and there was a key in the safe for the basement, which is where most of the nastier alchemy went on. What Keeper'd sent me in for was a bit of jewelry, which was easy enough, but the thing was that I didn't even need the fucking key to get it, and after all that fucking panicking up by the safe, there was no fucking way I wasn't going to use that key, no matter how fucking long it took, and Kethe be damned.  
  
I wasn't purely stupid, though. I put it back and went back to Keeper and kept my ears open, and I was about to get on to the really interesting bit about the missing kids when Felix said, "There's the crossroads. And Terada," and gave me a look that said I probably shouldn't go on talking if I wanted to sleep inside, so I'd got my hopes up about the listening thing.  
  
Didn't bother me too much to stop the story there, except that I hadn't told it right if he didn't want to hear the end, and that it meant he went back to staring at nothing for the night - and let me tell you, there's nothing worse than when all he does is eat and stare and sleep. So we both went to bed pretty fucking discouraged, him curled up on his side like he was back in Simside again, me staring at the ceiling because my fucking leg hurt if I slept any other fucking way.  
  
Wasn't 'til we got out on the road again that he said, almost like his old self, "And the key?" Like it was something I should've already thought of, and I was keeping him waiting as part of the story.  
  
I don't think I was ever more grateful to be a kept-thief.


End file.
